Before Going Farther

Before going farther, situate yourself in your everyday world
to ascertain what lives around you as a special food
for what is slowly starved if left unourished.

There’s the robin scuttling along
the side of the garage in the hot noonday sun,
convinced it is being chased
by who knows what, and forgetting it has wings.

It runs beneath a pink rose that wobbles
in solitary elegance atop a spindly new shoot
whose thorns point to the sky,
as do all things gradually escaping dead wood.

Go to the dusty border and step under the blue spruce
that grows thick with sheltering needles,
reminiscent of mountains where forests of such trees
gather to uphold their spires.

And don’t forget the clump of black-eyed Susans at your feet,
the ones set ablaze by the light, fuel for
what rockets orange into the sky
and coats the sun with its evening glory.

Prophecy

“You can’t carry a tune, and you can’t sing.”
 These are things I remember being told as a child,
 and so of course they became prophecy.
 And their prophecy and its fulfillment
 became a portion of the ground upon which
 I worshiped the All-knowing.
 

They wished the best for me— told me this over and over—
yet I saw the outward glances— scanning,tense—
poised to intercede, should an embarrassment break out
in the shape of a tune that sprang from my All-unknowing—
the kind you can’t carry, but that carries you.

Stephanie Unger

Image: Rose on White by Hannah Stouffer

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